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A fascinating survey of the history of political and economic ideas in the US that have led to an increasingly entrenched ultra-rich class of oligarchs.To an American, oligarchy is something that happens somewhere else. In
Oligarchy in America, Luke Winslow reveals oligarchy’s deep intellectual roots and alarming growth in America. The book provides conceptual tools the lack of which have prevented Americans from recognizing oligarchy at home. Winslow argues that generic labels like “billionaires” for a class of ultra-rich masks the pervasive structures that entrench their power. He introduces instead the concept of
democratic oligarchy—an institutional arrangement in which the ultra-rich form a class consciously creating and leveraging state power to accumulate wealth.
Like a master class in political ideas, Winslow traces the intellectual lineage of oligarchy in the US. His lively and compulsively readable survey examines key rhetorical sources such as Herbert Spencer, Andrew Carnegie, Friedrich Hayek, Lewis Powell, Milton Friedman, Charles Koch, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and others.
Oligarchy in America maps the connective web of oligarchic ideas uniting these disparate figures. By offering a lucid framework through which to view oligarchic ideas ambient in American culture, Winslow makes a vital contribution to readers and scholars of communication and rhetorical studies, public address, economics, and political science.
Sommario
Preface Introduction
Chapter 1. The Rhetoric of Democratic Oligarchy
Chapter 2. Survival of the Fittest and the Rhetoric of Herbert Spencer
Chapter 3. Natural Law and the Rhetoric of Andrew Carnegie
Chapter 4. The Road to Oligarchy and the Rhetoric of Friedrich Hayek
Chapter 5. Judicial Oligarchy and the Rhetoric of James J. Kilpatrick
Chapter 6. Cultivating Political Power and the Rhetoric of Lewis F. Powell
Chapter 7. The Laws of Science and the Rhetoric of Milton Friedman
Chapter 8. Conjoint Depletion and the Rhetoric of James M. Buchanan
Chapter 9. The Science of Success and the Rhetoric of Charles Koch
Chapter 10. Class Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Tucker Carlson
Conclusion: The Oligarchy We Deserve
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
References
Index
Info autore
Luke Winslow is an associate professor of rhetorical studies in the Department of Communication at Baylor University. He is author of
American Catastrophe: Fundamentalism, Climate Change, Gun Rights, and the Rhetoric of Donald J. Trump,
Economic Injustice and the Rhetoric of the American Dream, and coauthor of
Children as Rhetorical Advocates in Social Movements.
Riassunto
Illuminates one of the most widely used yet poorly understood concepts in contemporary discourse, as apt and relevant to democracy in America as it is to Eastern Europe and Putin’s Russia.
